HorseSoldier
New member
I've seen pics of our troops raiding houses with antiquated soviet PPSh SMGs, because they didn't think that the M4 was adequate for the job. That seems to me to say that "WE NEED AN SMG NOWADAYS".....and if we were to apply modern methods into a tested & honed design, whose to say it wouldn't be a good firearm, either for noncom personnel or, say, close-quarters combat, etc? Because no matter how you look at the issue, the M4 using FA is NOT the thing that fills the hole SMGs left in our military.
The M4 and similar rifle-caliber carbines don't fill the need for an SMG, they simply eradicate it and makes the whole concept of an SMG obsolete. Or more exactly, the rifle caliber assault carbine is the weapon the original SMG designers, Thompson included, would have made if they'd set out to make an SMG with 1990s or turn of the century technology rather than 1910s and 1920s technology.
Modern body armor does the same thing -- renders the pistol caliber SMG obsolete.
The Thompson ain't the answer for any questions we're currently asking in the military (the Thompson especially, being longer than an M4). A handful of MP5s handle those extremely rare situations where you do need something like that, but even those weapons, never very common to begin with, are dwindling fast. The rifle caliber carbine does the trick better than the pistol caliber SMG ever did.
As for a full automatic M4 (well, M4A1, actually) versus a fully automatic Thompson -- either allows troops to waste ammunition as fast as they can and otherwise accomplish very little.